a cold or stuffy nose doesn't work. so how did the drug get approved? and how can you get real relief school schedule? how would you like a four day school week for your child? we'll hear from a professor who's researched the concept and explored the benefits and downsides to this schedule that's becoming more popular.

but first, rules of the road are they being enforced in san francisco, one supervisor says no, no. if you drive in the city, chances are you've seen it blatant disregard for traffic signs and signals and no repercussion. san francisco supervisor rafael mandelman wants to know why he sent a letter of inquiry to the police department after it reported a 97% drop in traffic citations in eight years. a supervisor mendelman joins us live now to talk about this pretty big issue for the city supervisor. thanks for your time. sure >> good to be here. >> all right. so you've sent this letter to the police department to learn the underlying issues. have they responded to you yet? what have you learned? >> yeah. so we and the board of supervisors has been looking at this issue for as long as i've been on the board, probably longer. and it just gets worse and worse every time we look at these stats. it looks like enforcement has gone down further so that, as you pointed out, it's down like 97. so we

asked back in may, we sent a letter to the police department asking them to, one, explain to us what's going on and what are the reasons for this. and two, give us a plan to get back to 2014 levels of traffic enforcement. and they did respond and their response was interesting. one thing they pointed to was the just the decline in overall staffing within in the department. they are extremely understaffed. they're down more than 500 officers. it's a huge problem for the city and it's impacting policing generally. but they identified a couple of other interesting things that i think are worth noting. so one thing that they pointed out was that the changes in law and policy at the state and local level around traffic stops have added significant administrative burden for each officer who does a traffic stop. so that whereas as ten years ago, a traffic stop might have been a 3 to 5 minute exercise with all the paperwork that may be involved at this point, it may be a 20 to 30

minute exercise, guys, and that just in and of itself, both reduces, you know, the efficiency, the number of citations you can issue, but also really disincentivizes even doing it in the first place because you're going to put a whole lot of time into an activity that's not going to have that much results. and then the second thing they sort of talked about in their in their response was they're sort of switching over to more of a focus on directed operations, which is rather than, you know, having enforcement everywhere, picking particular areas where they were going to do more enforcement. i'm not sure that's adequate. it doesn't feel adequate. i think on the streets right now. so i think san franciscans are, you know, frustrated about lots of aspects of, you know, crime. but but i think the feeling that there's just no law on the road is a big problem. >> yeah. i mean, i don't know where the directed area is. targeted areas have been, but i certainly see cars disregarding road rules on the embarcadero

through the financial district south of market and tenderloin, just some of the areas that i've driven through recently. i'm just naming some neighborhoods every neighborhood. >> and you know, we've been on this ten year project of trying to get traffic related fatalities down to zero. and although we've spent tens of millions of dollars on improvements to streets and creating bike lanes and all sorts of things like the actual number of people who are dying on the roads, last year was as high as it has been in ten years. so no measurable progress . and that at least has to be partly, i think, because there's been this complete evaporation of enforcement. i think those investments are important. but without without enforcement, you know, we lose any gains that we might be getting from that. >> yeah, in fact, i think we have a graphic that illustrates the fatalities that you're talking about in terms of that going up over the last few years as opposed to down as of july. right. this year, there have been 13 traffic fatalities and we're talking about 39

fatalities. his last year. and, you know, can you talk about this growth and how it really is going in the opposite direction that you hope to for that grand vision zero plan, which i think was what, next year is when you're supposed to achieve zero fatalities by the end of this year, we're in the closing months and we are so far away. >> i think this year it looks like it's going to be a little bit better than last year, but last year again was the worst year in ten years. and those statistics about about death are horrible. and there was a horrific killing of a of a young kid on an intersection in soma a few weeks back. but it also doesn't talk about the hundreds of people whose lives are changed by a crash. they may not have been killed, but they may have brain injuries. they may have, you know, damage to their bodies that they you know, it takes a long time to recover from. so we need to get a handle on this problem. and i think there's a law enforcement role there. and we have to figure out

a way to get our police back in the traffic enforcement business. we don't want to give up all of the, you know, success as we've had around police reform. um, but i think we need more law, a lot more traffic enforcers than we've been getting. and i'm hoping we're going to have a hearing at the board of supervisors on this. you know, on this letter and the response at the end of september. and i'm hoping, you know, we can begin to hear from the department what they need from the politicians to feel comfortable getting it back into the business, traffic enforcement and then start holding them accountable. and i'm hoping we can have these hearings on a regular cadence, maybe every every quarter to see what's happening with these numbers and how are they measuring and improving safety on the streets. >> yeah, supervisor mendelman, in case we didn't mention it off the top, we talked about 97% drop in the number of citations in eight years. what's the actual number? just so we can have an idea how many they're averaging each day. >> the last number they got, which was i think reported maybe

through the beginning part of this year was like ten a day, and that was down from 350 citations a day on average in 2014. so it's just that's that's mind boggling. >> but aside from the safety issue, which is, of course, key and first and foremost, what about the revenue to the city? because we're issuing those citations actually represents significant revenue for the city , doesn't it? >> there's potential revenue. now, i would say, and this is i think, especially frustrating to san francisco as they know that if they oversee stay in their parking space, you know, they're going to get a ticket and they're going to get charged. and so people are you know, we have incredible parking enforcement right in this city. but just no traffic enforcement . and yeah, there's, you know, probably some loss to the to the general fund because of that. but the real problem is we need safe streets and when we don't have them and law enforcement is a part of a part of the solution. right. >> so you mentioned the staffing

issue. how much manpower? woman power it takes now and how much longer it takes. is more money the solution to be able to hire more officers dedicated to doing that? well some of it is. >> i mean, we use overtime to ensure that we meet a whole bunch of public safety priorities. so even though we are under staffed, we have not identified apparent early traffic enforcement as a high priority. and i think we may need to maybe we need to spend some overtime dollars to be able to use some of the officers. we do have for more traffic enforcement. but we also need to look at the efficiency of the officers that we have. and if the changes that we've made have taken a five minute stop and made it a 30 minute exercise, you know, i think we need to look at whether we can get some of the gains that we've gotten by taking a look at being more thoughtful about policing without just having this increase inefficiency. >> right. before i let you go, one last question. you talked about the need for perhaps more attention to the citations that

are currently being unissued and overlooked. what about just improvements in infrastructure in the city that may make it safer? >> oh, absolutely. it's got to be an all of the above kind of response. and we can do a lot with with with investments to make the streets safer and slow traffic down just through how we've constructed the street. but i think at the end, end end you know there are we're getting changes in state law that are allowing us to do more around automated enforcement of running red lights and speeding. and those things are important. and i'm hoping that the state legislature and the governor will actually get us the automated speed enforcement that we've been hoping for many years . but even with those things, there's still a role for an officer in pulling over a bad driver, either having a conversation with that person or giving them a ticket so that they remember for and the next time they don't cut that pedestrian off as that person is crossing the street. >> all right. exploring the issue of traffic enforcement, the city supervisor, mendelman,

thank you so much. >> thank you. >> could a solution to a nationwide teacher shortage be a shorter school week? more school districts are making the switch. up next, a researcher shares what he discovered about the effects of a four day school week on parents

you got two, jack. and then my grand slam. i signed a ball for you. okay. and it says "papa i love you". why did you do that? because you've taught me everything about baseball.

oh hunny bunny, that's so sweet. ( ♪ ) ( ♪ ) a win win. joining us live now with his research, oregon state university professor doctor paul thompson. doctor thompson, thanks for joining us.

>> great to be here. >> a four day school week, is that a new and rare concept or not really? >> it's definitely a growing trend around the country. you know, we're up to 2100 schools in almost 900 school districts across the us that are currently using this four day school week model. >> so just so we're clear, are we talking about four days total or four days in person, one day remote, still five days. >> generally, these are four days in person. the fifth day is kind of open on to the school's discretion. many of them just have it closed to students on that fifth day. but we have seen more schools turning to things like asynchronous learning since the pandemic. you know, most notably in oklahoma. >> yeah. okay. i was going to ask you, who is doing it? where are they adopting the schedule? >> it's mostly in western states. you know, so 26 states currently use this. most notably, we're seeing big increases recently around

teacher retention, teacher recruitment in places like missouri and texas. but this has been used for a long time in states like colorado, oregon, arizona, montana, lots of these western states with really large rural school districts. >> i see. i don't think it's that popular here in california. but but i am wondering, you know, where are the benefits you mentioned teacher recruitment, perhaps i'm thinking for the school district, maybe there's a staffing advantage or budget advantage. can you talk about that? >> so, you know, traditionally schools have thought that this was going to save them lots of money. right? you cancel one day of school, right. you can make cost savings on bussing staff and things like that. our research showed that there was very minimal cost savings. you know, about 1 to 2% was saved as a result of switching to the four day school week. and, you know, now a lot of schools are making the switch around. teacher tension. right. and research, we don't really know whether this is effective yet. you know, we hear a lot of

anecdotal evidence that, you know, schools are getting more applications from teachers, but we don't yet know whether this is keeping the highest quality teachers in these districts. but overall, i think the biggest benefit to schools is flexibility. >> all right. but what about for students? ultimately that's most important, right? i have so many questions surrounding a possible four day schedule. it's like, are they in class longer for those four days? kind of like if you had like a four day workweek, you'd spend ten hours instead of eight hours in the office. right. or how about just retention after a three day weekend? if the stuff they learned, these are all great points. >> you know, traditionally four day school weeks, you know, are lengthening the other four school days by about 30 minutes to an hour per day. so students are in the classroom longer on those other four school days. but that's not enough generally to compensate for that full loss day right. so we looked in oregon and we found that about 3 to 4 hours per week were lost in terms of student time in school . and those almost translated directly to declines we saw in student achievement. and looking

nationally, we see the same thing, right? schools that are on the lowest end of time in school, that use afforded school week model. these are the places that we see big declines in achievement. if you're a school that maintains instructional time, we don't really see any noticeable differences between 4 and 5 day students right. >> okay. what about, you know, isn't it harder on parents who might have to work five days a week? that's a downside, right? >> you know, i think a lot of parents are concerned, what am i going to do with my student on the fifth day? right. and there's issues of kind of the shifting burden of what schools have traditionally done for families and shifting that on to the families themselves. right. child care, food provision, physical activity. you know, these have implications for student health, nutrition. you know, risky behaviors. you know, papers have shown increases in juvenile crime in areas that have gone to a four day school week model because of unsupervised kids. right. so i think childcare is a big issue. what can we do to kind of promote academic and social engagements on that day off? i

think are critical for the success of this model, right. >> so when you look at the data that you do have right now, is it easy for you as a researcher to come up with a conclusion as to overall whether the benefits outweigh the down sides? or is it the other way around? >> you know, i think it's pretty difficult to call right now. you know, this is very context specific. you know, lots of four day school week have very unique situations. four day schools work well and very small rural communities where maybe students are already missing a lot of time for athletics or appointments. it might not work so well in other areas where students are losing a lot of time. and so i think we're getting a better handle on some policy implications around time in school, being the key driver of student achievement impacts around the four day school week model. but i think we're a ways off in determining, well, are the benefits really realized for schools and what are these kind of potential negative consequences around student health nonacademic impact and family impact as well?

>> well, dr. paul thompson, sounds like your research must continue then. thank you. >> we hope so. thanks so much. >> appreciate it. a widely used cold and flu drug that you may have right now in your medicine cabinet. likely does not work. so why has it been on store shelves for more than 60 years? we get a diagnosis from dr. peter chin-hong

one aleve works all day so i can keep working my magic. just one aleve. 12 hours of uninterrupted pain relief. aleve. who do you take it for? and for fast topical pain relief, try alevex. doesn't work at all. the fda's announcement about fennel efron has thrown the huge drug maker market and consumers into total confusion. joining us live now to help us understand the science and our options is ucsf infectious diseases specialist dr. peter chin-hong. hey, whenever i want to be deacon fuzed. dr. chin-hong, i call you? yes, definitely. >> super confusing area. >> i know. okay. so first, tell people what is phenylephrine and how does it work as a

decongestant? >> yeah. so phenylephrine is marketed as a decongestant, and what it does is it constricts blood vessels, so it's actually used for other conditions as well. when people have eye problems, sometimes phenylephrine is used. it's used in what we most commonly know in a liquid form, but it's also it can be administered in a nasal spray as well. and each of these have different levels of efficacy, but there are different other medicines that constrict vessels as well. and when you constrict the vessel, you, you know, get some of the fluid, you redistribute some of the fluid, and that's how you get decongest it. >> got it. okay. so i know it's been around since the 1970s. right? but it really didn't get super popular until i guess they decided to put the old sudafed pseudoephedrine behind the counter in 2006. explain to people how that happened and what that was about. >> yeah. so people use a lot of

sudafed, what people know as sudafed, which is pseudoephedrine, it's another agent that also constricts blood vessels. and it probably does it a lot better than phenylephrine , which is over-the-counter. and the reason why they moved it behind with the pharmacist is because people can use a buy a lot of sudafed and make meth out of it. if people looked at breaking bad in the beginning, before jesse went rogue, he used to go and buy a bunch of sudafed and that's essentially what they were doing. >> i see. okay so how did the fda advisory panel reach this conclusion after all this time that this stuff doesn't work for, you know, decongestion, i think to a lot of people who've been following this area, this is not new news. >> these studies have been going on for the last few years and they essentially show that if you gave sugar pill or a placebo or if you gave the active ingredient phenylephrine, that the people had the same effect.

in other words, it didn't really work, although there is probably going to be a placebo effect, meaning that if somebody tells you something is going to work for something, some people might actually believe in and actually have those sensations right. >> but there is some disagreement, right, about this. the consumer health care products association disputes it. and they say, hey, it does work. this is too hasty. what's your thought on that? >> i think, you know, i reviewed some of the studies and it's pretty clear that there is really no effect of using this drug on congestion in i would say on a personal note, i have bad allergies every year, which, you know, results in a lot of congestion and fennel. ephron never works for me. i actually always use my license to get sudafed or claritin d across the counter because, again, it didn't really work on me. >> i see. well actually, we don't need to be a doctor to be able to or get a prescription to

get sudafed. right. you just have to show your driver's license. they write it down right that way. yeah, you're tracked. okay so what is the implication of this for people who have cold medicines with phenylephrine at home? right now? you know, do they look for it? do they throw it out? do they still take it for the other things that are in there? >> i suppose to other products? this one is not actually dangerous at all. in in the scores of studies that have been done. so that's why there's probably going to be some time and some debate before it's actually pulled out of circulation because many of the other active ingredients in combination cold medicines like nyquil people or mucinex combination pill medicine, they actually work. so you know something? >> that's because of the other ingredients. >> yeah. yes the other ingredients. the tylenol or decongestant, the cough suppressants, but not the phenyl afrin part. >> okay. so you can still take

it, right. but what about if you really want to treat the nasal congestion, what are the alternatives to take? >> yeah. so there are lots of other alternatives. i think you can certainly show your license without a prescription and get sudafed, urine or sudafed, either in combination or by itself across the counter, there's nasal decon. so afrin people might know of as a nasal decongestant. the only trick with afrin is if you use it for more than five days, it can actually make a congestion worse. so be very careful about that rebound. and if you have other conditions that result in congestion like allergies like i do, there are a lot of other effective treatments like nasal steroids. flonase all of these actually work very well to help people with allergies. >> all right. hey dr. chin-hong, i got to ask you, you know, we're talking about cold medication. cold and flu season is starting up. of course, i know you've been encouraging people to get the flu vaccine,

but also today it is now available. you can get the newly reformulated new version of the covid vaccine. so i want to ask you if you think people should rush out right now to get both or what do you advise? >> so i think there's one group of people who should rush out a little bit more than the others. and the people i'm worried most about are those who are older than 65 and immune compromise of any age, particularly if you weren't infected and or got a vaccine in the last six months, which is a lot of people, i think i'll probably feel less nervous if you got it sooner rather than later. but i think for everyone else, i think getting it before thanksgiving, you can before halloween, sorry, sometime september, october, you can combine the two flu and covid together and that will peak your antibodies in time for when we expect that flu to be in season. >> okay. and i want to ask you, just because somebody called me to ask, hey, where can i get it? because i went to my local

walmart, they didn't have it yet. and what's your advice for how to search for where that vaccine is available right now? yeah >> so there's a site, vaccines.gov. i'm not sure if the myturn california has been updated yet, but certainly vaccines dot gov is the place to go, particularly if you're worried about payment because there are many programs that still will give this vaccine for free. for those who don't have insurance, i think people have insurance, no worries at all. but but again, there are going to be safety net vaccines available. >> got it. so if you have insurance, they're going to cover it. they're not going to deny it. right. it's covered. okay. all right, andy, that was for you. dr. chin-hong answered your question. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> a reminder, folks, you can get our live newscasts breaking news, weather and more with our abc7 bay area streaming tv app. it's available on apple tv. google tv, fire tv and roku. just search abc7 bay area and download

tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. the dramatic capture of that escaped killer. the dog that took him down. also, the u.s. state department tonight on the americans onboard a cruise ship that has run aground. and a moment on capitol hill late today, senator mitt romney not running again. and what he said about politicians in their 80s in this country. first tonight, the fugitive murder on the run, taken down. you'll see the images tonight, minutes after being taken into custody. a dea plane with